India and language!

When it comes to education in India, the linguistic question has always been a fraught and emotive one. Recent discussions around the NEP have once again brought to the forefront some of the debates that we've been grappling with since independence; for instance, the question of the medium of instruction, and the relative places of English, Hindi, and other vernacular languages in our educational framework.

One kind of framing of this linguistic debate, which is quite common, is as aspiration versus tradition (a dialectic which seems to underlie so many of the schisms and tensions of modern India). On one side is the role of English as an instrument of aspiration, as a gateway to economic opportunity; on the other side is the attachment to our native languages and their role as repositories of our culture and history.

My view is that for the most part, there need be no dichotomy here, and that we should aim to both preserve our knowledge of our indigenous languages as well as acquire and embrace new ones and the opportunities they offer. On paper, this has generally been an aspect of India's language policy as well. But in practice, there have always been political pulls and pressures one way or the other; and of course deeply unequal access to actual educational opportunities. And the NEP too seems to represent a shift in the direction of prioritising the 'mother tongue' over English as a medium of education.

Without getting into the main thread of the debate as outlined above, I wanted to point out a related issue which I feel has been less discussed. This is the link between school education and higher education. Mostly, the discussion around the medium of instruction is about school education. But in higher education, our medium of instruction is predominantly English, and that seems to be mostly unquestioned. So one should not really talk of language policy at the school level in isolation, as mostly seems to happen. If our universities are mostly going to offer only English medium education, then any move towards favouring non-English medium instruction in the public school system is clearly going to put those children at a disadvantage (compared to those who may have access to private English-medium schools, say).  

We already see this all the time: there is a significant language barrier for those who are from non-English medium backgrounds, and while a some places have some support mechanisms, those students naturally still tend to have a considerably harder time adjusting to English medium teaching. If they could have had the opportunity to become familiar with English medium instruction from an earlier stage, they would of course benefit when they went to a university and would be able to gain more from their time there.

So one cannot talk of favouring the mother tongue at the school level (using the tradition-based arguments mentioned above), but then say that we will continue to favour English at the university level. To do so is to just reinforce class inequality, and ensure that those who have less access to private education will face additional barriers in pursuing higher education. Either one should say that one will shift the medium of education in the universities also towards Indian languages -- but I don't think that is really happening anytime soon, and both its feasibility and desirability are questionable. Or one has to accept that for equality of opportunity, every child must have a chance to become well-versed in the English medium from an early stage.

To reiterate, I don't think that doing so implies neglecting our own languages. Surely we can work out a model where the aim is to have the primary medium of instruction for everyone be English; but at the same time also give due place to the local language and have some instruction in that also. I have at times found myself wishing that I was more familiar with the Hindi terms for a number of concepts -- wouldn't it be nice if I had been able to learn them as well at school, alongside the English terms which of course proved very useful once I went into higher education? As children are so adept at being able to acquire facility in multiple languages, having multiple or mixed media of instruction should not really add any particular burden, and may even have some cognitive benefits. But the exact pedagogy of this kind of model is something which can be further researched and finetuned over time.

To sum up: what if we move beyond the debates about English versus mother tongue, and stop seeing them as opposed to each other? Why can't we come up with a model which recognises the importance of English in the modern world and aims to give every child a chance to acquire English fluency; but at the same time also preserves and enhances the study of Indian languages, in conjunction?